Montenegro is ready for NATO

Italian president Sergio Mattarella has arrived today in an official visit to Montenegro. This is the first visit of the Italian President of Montenegro after 32 years. He was in Cetinje where he said that Montenegro is ready for NATO.

Italian President Sergio Mattarella on Tuesday said Italy and Montenegro are ”connected by a great friendship in the present and by a future together within NATO and the EU”. ”We are convinced that Montenegro must enter NATO”, he also said after meeting with his counterpart in Montenegro, Filip Vujanovic. ”We hope this will happen by this year with a prompt invite”. Mattarella also said that Montenegro has ”a strategic position” and is an ally, expressing the hope this ”will happen very soon”. As far as Montenegro’s adhesion to the EU is concerned, Mattarella stressed that Podgorica ”has opened 18 chapters for adhesion, of which two have already been closed. It is a prospect of great importance for the EU to be completed with the integration of the Balkan area”, stated the president.

”Italy and Montenegro cooperate on economic sectors as well as on justice and corruption”, continued Mattarella, recalling the accord of strategic cooperation between Rome and Podgorica ”which I promulgated less than a month ago” and which ”has great potential so it can develop with great force”.